Under the Skin

The Parker guy’s a piece of work too. He took down two of Burke’s biggest palookas in an alley fight. Bit one’s nose and ear off. Broke the other one’s back.”

“It’s getting close to a fucken war up there,” Rose said. “A month ago one of Healy’s biggest joints burned down. Next day three of Burke’s best boys vanish. A week later one of them pops up in White Rock Lake. They drag the lake and bring up a car with the other two guys in it. All three had a bullet behind the ear. Persons unknown, the cops said, but the outfits know who it was.”

“With so much going on up there,” I said, “why would Healy start trouble with us by moving his machines down here?”

“That was Ragsdale’s doing,” Sam said. “Willie Rags contracted the slots from Healy and told him he was going to put them in Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, all over the oil patch. But then he got ambitious. Thought he’d impress Healy by getting some of them into Galveston County.”

“So Healy’s big mistake was dealing with Ragsdale,” I said.

“No, that was only his first mistake,” Rose said. “His second mistake was thinking the slots still belonged to him. Then he hit my guys…that was his big fucken mistake.”

“I guess I’m off to Dallas,” I said.

“I want it done yesterday,” Rose said. He took two envelopes out of his top drawer and tossed them to me. One contained expense money, the other a city map of Dallas with exact directions to Healy’s office and to his home, and map markings showing the locations of several of his favorite restaurants and bars.

“Parker too,” Rose said.

“We talked to the Fort Worth and Dallas outfits an hour ago,” Sam said. “We’ll be settling our thing with Healy but we’ll be doing them a hell of a favor too—Healy out of their hair and their hands clean, nothing to hide from the cops. But they want Parker out too, and to show their appreciation they ponied up a big advance on a contract to buy all their machines from us from now on.”

“The least they can do,” I said.

“You and your partners will get a bonus on this one,” Sam said with a grin. “The least we can do.”

I stared at Rose. He almost smiled—then looked at his watch.

I got going.

The phone rang and rang before somebody finally picked up. A woman. “Jesus…what?” she said.

“Sheila?” I said.

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then, in barely above a whisper: “Who’s this?” One of those who never knew when one beau might call while she was with another.

“Let me talk to LQ,” I said.

“Huh? Say, who is this?” I could tell by her voice she was half in the bag. “You know what time it is? Do I know you?”

“Just put him on the phone, will you, sugar? It’s real important.”

The softer tone and the “sugar” did the trick. “Well…he’s sleeping pretty hard right now.”

“He’s passed out, you mean?”

“I don’t know if I’d say that. Just he’s sleeping pretty hard and it’d take a while to wake him, I think. Say, now, don’t I know you…?”

“How about Brando?”

“Who?”

“Ray.”

“Oh…Just a minute, I’ll go look.”

The phone clunked down and then I heard her voice at a distance but couldn’t make out what she was saying. After a minute somebody picked up the phone and coughed and said, “Yeah?” Brando.

“It’s me. Tell me how to get there. We got work.”

He gave me directions to Sheila’s house and then said, “Where we headed?”

I gave him a rundown on what happened to our men in Dickinson and what the job was. “I’m on the way to the ferry right now,” I said. “See you in about three hours. Be sure the Dodge is gassed.”

“It’s gassed already. Listen, me and LQ aint got but pistols. If we gonna need—”

“I already saw Richardson and got two Remington pumps with buckshot loads,” I said. Richardson was a graybeard who ran a hardware store in town but his real business was guns. He could get you any kind you wanted in almost any quantity. He even made after-hours deals at his home—his attic was an arsenal. He did a lucrative trade with Maceo men.

“Pumps,” Brando said. “Outstanding.”

“Be ready, both of you.”

The Dodge was parked at the curb in front of the house. I pulled up behind it and snapped off the radio in the middle of “Limehouse Blues.” It was close to four o’clock. The moon had set behind the pines but there were only a few thin clouds and the stars were thick and bright. There was an old Ford coupe in the driveway. The living room window showed light behind the curtain. I gunned the engine a couple of times and somebody pulled the curtain aside just enough to peek out and then let it fall back. Then the house went dark and the front door opened and LQ and Brando came out with their bags. The women stepped out with them and there was a lot of hugging and kissing and patting of asses while I locked up the Terraplane.

I put my valise in the trunk of the Dodge and got in the backseat. LQ and Brando came over and put their Gladstones in the truck too. There was a smaller bag with the pickup money and LQ jammed it under the front seat.

“You drive,” he told Brando, and settled himself by the shotgun window. Brando went around and got behind the wheel and cranked up the motor.

“Too bad that Terraplane seats only two inside,” Brando said. “I’d like to drive that honey to Dallas.”

“We took that honey to Dallas I’d be driving and you’d be the one riding in the rumble seat,” LQ said.

“Drive this,” Brando said, jacking his fist. He got us rolling. The radio started blaring “Stardust” and he turned the volume down.

“Goddamn day would have to have a lot more than twenty-four hours in it for you to’ve picked a lousier time to roust us,” LQ said without looking back at me. I could tell by his voice he was still partly drunk.

“Twenty-seven o’clock,” Brando said, and chuckled. “Thirty-three o’clock.”

“It didn’t take you three hours to pack a bag,” I said. “While you’ve been sleeping it off some more I’ve been driving, so don’t cry on my shoulder.”

I took off my coat and balled it into a pillow and stretched out on the seat with my back toward them and closed my eyes.

“He don’t sound real eager to hear about our good time, does he?” Brando said.

The weather stayed pleasant with only a hint of chill. The day broke cloudless and the air smelled sweet and dry. They hadn’t had a good look at my face till the morning light, and they naturally made a bunch of jokes about it—LQ saying it looked like I’d picked a fight with the wrong little girl—before I told them about the sparring match with Otis.

“Hellfire,” LQ said, “I never did understand why you done all that boxing anyhow. Playfighting by a bunch of rules. That don’t help a man a damn bit when he gets in a for-real fight. How you done him is proof of that.”

“What I don’t get,” Brando said, “is why you waited till you got knocked on your ass so many times before you busted him up. First time he floored me would’ve been the last.”

We stopped at a roadside cafe and took a booth in the back corner and all of us ordered coffee and cornbread, eggs and pork chops and grits. The waitress was a trim pretty thing in a tight skirt and we all gave her the once-over and she smiled at our attention.

She’d just walked off to the kitchen window with our orders when Brando said, “Oh man, I can’t keep it to myself no more—you gotta hear this,” and started telling me all about his fun with Cora Jane, the friend that Sheila had gotten for him. Cora Jane had done this to him, he said, she had done that, she had done everything. She had even shown him a couple of tricks he hadn’t heard of.